Convenience
by antoninya
Summary: "The girl lay dead." The moments after Myrtle is killed by the Basilisk. Tom Marvolo Riddle's second Horcrux.


The girl lay dead.

Tom tightened his jaw, his bottom teeth nearly cutting into the inside of his mouth. This was inconvenient.

"_Go._" He kept looking at the dead girl as he spoke in Parseltongue. There was no need to cause his own death as well by looking into that pair of great, deadly yellow eyes. The Basilisk moved itself back down the pipe, its huge body scraping against the opening where the sink had been, leaving some shimmering, poison-green scales behind. The sink slowly rose again, covering the entrance to the Chamber up, swallowing the shed scales. At least the sink looked the same, like nothing had happened. Like a stupid girl hadn't been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Tom let out a slow breath. He looked over his shoulder at the door to the girls' lavatory and, just for good measure, took out his wand and strengthened the locking charm on the door. He strode across the room to it, and whispered: "_Repellum_."

The dead girl was inconvenient, but he could work with that. Tom's lip curled up, the sight of death making him instinctively recoil. He controlled the reaction. He was, if nothing else, capable of that.

There was still time for the girl to be of use. She could still be helpful in death. He didn't know her name, but the robes suggested she was a Ravenclaw. She probably was a Mudblood, too.

Tom removed his robes and the ring from his hand. He slipped it into the pocket of his robes before he tossed them over one of the stall doors. They would contaminate what he was about to do. He needed only the object, his wand, and the body. The triumvirate of a wizard making a horcrux: mind, body and soul.

The stall door his robes hung on swung closed under their weight. He rolled up his sleeves.

The diary was easily conjured. It was a simple thing: black leather with thin pages. It had been bought at a Muggle store, even. It was absurdly simplistic.

He dropped the book onto the body, taking care that it landed near the girl's heart. He pointed at her.

"_Silencio_." Dead bodies did not normally make a sound, but this was an exceptional case.

Tom knelt on the ground. The cold tiles of the floor bit at his knees through his trousers. He conjured a dagger, transparent like glass but made of something much stronger. He set it aside for a moment, and picked up his wand.

He closed his eyes and began the incantations: the words that were forbidden, the ones he had found in the depths of those dark books. Words of life and words of death, words of the soul and things that were not supposed to ever leave the black they originated from. The syllables tasted heavy in his mouth, of blood and decay and cold. Tom could feel the temperature falling.

The girl's body jerked, like she was still in it. She looked like an epileptic having a fit. Her eyes were open and, for a moment, Tom regretted not closing them.

Tom switched his wand to his right hand, and picked up the dagger with his left. He positioned it carefully, laying his right hand and wand flat against the girl's chest as a guide, against the absence of a heartbeat. He held the diary in place and plunged the dagger in.

If there had been no Silencing Charm, the body would have screamed in violation. Blood welled beneath the diary.

Heart's blood, though the girl's heart pumped no more.

Tom counted down the moments. There was a pain starting in his own chest, in his own heart. His cheek twitched. This was nothing compared to the pain that would come later. And neither was comparable to the pain that death would be.

He wrenched the dagger free. The body's mouth continued to stay open, the silent scream continued. Tom switched the dagger to the hand already holding his wand. He gripped it along with the dagger's handle, pointing the glowing tip downward. It was warm against his palm. He flipped open the diary, now drenched in the girl's blood. It shone like a dull stone, like a brilliant light obscured by shadows.

He turned his own hand palm up and sliced it open, moving across his lifeline. The blood spread across his palm, running toward his wrist. He let his hand go limp and let gravity cover the rest of his hand in blood.

With each new drop that fell onto the already bloody diary, it hissed. It spoke to him in his own language, calling him onward.

Hand coated in a thin sheen of his own blood, Tom Marvolo Riddle pressed his hand to the diary, to the heart's blood of the body, and he could feel the pain in his own chest increase exponentially. The diary hissed louder.

It felt like his blood was on fire, racing down from his heart, down his left arm and into the diary. He could taste blood where he had bitten his own lip. He would not scream. He was not weak enough to scream this time. He swallowed it back down.

Around his fingers, spread out on the pages, he could see the diary's glow brighten. It burnt like the sun and he withdrew the blood still flowing from his cut palm.

Somewhere in the middle of the pain, just before it reached a crescendo, Tom healed his hand. The cut closed with a pull, snapping the skin shut, severing the link. He couldn't breathe. He felt like something was reaching inside of him and _pulling_.

It left him light-headed and breathing very fast. He leaned backward, hands grasping at the sink's edges, wand clattering to the ground. The pain in the middle of his chest felt like it would actually tear his physical body in two, not just his soul.

Tom caught the eye of his own reflection in the mirror. His pupils were dilated, nearly covering the irises, which had turned a brilliant red. His skin was pale and sweat-sheeted. He pulled free one of the nearby towels meant for hand drying and patted his face dry. When he looked back again, his eyes were returning to normal and the colour was beginning to slide back into his cheeks. The pain in his chest was beginning to subside. He could breath again.

He Vanished the towel and the knife. It would just be stupid to leave any evidence around. He moved on with the clean-up, picking up the diary, healing the wound in the girl's chest and siphoning the blood away. He mended her shirt and reached down to smooth it, tweaking the collar so that it was in the right place. It looked like she had simply dropped dead of unknown causes.

He made sure that there was no blood left on his person before he pulled his own robes back on over his clothing. He straightened the Prefect badge.

Before unlocking the door, he pointed his wand at it. "_Hominem Revelio_."

The light wind rushed over him. There was no one on the other side. To make sure that he wasn't seen, Tom cast a Disillusionment Charm upon himself. He allowed a small shiver as it took place, moving coldly down his skin.

"_Finite. Alohomora._" He pocketed his wand and the diary, sliding the ring back onto his index finger where it belonged.

Tom Marvolo Riddle exited the girls' lavatory under the Disillusionment Charm, sixteen years old and immortal twice over. He ran his thumb over the side of the Gaunt family ring with one hand, and kept the other in his pocket, fingertips running over the corners of the diary.

They both thrummed with power, moving in time to his own heart beat.

That had been the hard part. Finding someone - finding something - to blame for the girl's death would be much easier.

He smiled.


End file.
